


if you wanna kiss the boy

by vulcanistics



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Closeted Character, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, POV Second Person, PSG vs Manchester United, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 15:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18167144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcanistics/pseuds/vulcanistics
Summary: 5 times Julian wanted to kiss Presnel and the 1 time he did.





	if you wanna kiss the boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shutupeliza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shutupeliza/gifts).



> Not exactly edited, but shout out to Colleen for giving it a look through when it was in its initial stages.
> 
> Title from Kiss the Boy by Keiynan Lonsdale.

**1.  
** **Angers vs PSG, Coupe de France Finals,** **  
** **May 2017.**

 

Presnel Kimpembe holds your hand and presses his nose to your neck and laughs. You exhale through your mouth and ignore the way you can hear the rhythm of your heartbeat at the back of your head.

Footballers do not go around kissing their teammates. Footballers cannot go around kissing their teammates. You know this. You have known this ever since that one friendly practice match when you were a teenager.

It had happened the way all these things happen.

You stared at one boy from a rival team for a little too long. Eyes tracking him across the field, watching him laugh in the middle of a hug after he scored a goal past your team, and you had felt like the seams of your skin were tearing. You were being rebuilt from inside out and it was a revelation.

After the match had ended and the locker room was empty and the rest of the boys were already gone, your coach had pulled you aside to talk to you. He was gentle on you, much nicer than you probably deserved for getting distracted by the way the opponent's mouth had curved into a smirk. 

He had told you what was expected of you and what could happen to you if _this_ continued. He never addressed what this was, never put the word out there in the open but the unspoken silence was an uncomfortable weight at the bottom of your stomach. You knew and you squirmed in shame and nodded.

On your way back home, you had stared out the bus window and thanked God that your father had been busy and unable to watch your match because if he had seen what your coach saw, he wouldn't have been as nice. You knew that.

Professional footballers can’t go around thinking about kissing men. But you are old and experienced enough to know that some of them do and you envy them for it because you are not them. You have lived half your life willing away any thought that might rip football away from you.

And even when you learnt that it was alright, that it did not make you an anomaly, that you could have happiness, even if only in secret, you still hoped that you would change. Eventually, you thought that the only thing left for you to do is to ignore it. because you believed that maybe if you tried hard enough, it would be okay. You would be okay and no one would have to repeat the conversation your childhood coach had with you.

All you had to do was not fall in love with a man and you failed at that.

Layvin shrieks distantly – no, he's right there next to you – but every atom of your body is paying attention to Presnel and it takes you a minute to realise where you are, what you're doing, what you're celebrating.

Presnel’s lips brush against your neck as he pulls away from you to roll his eyes at Layvin. You briefly wonder if you imagined it – the warm feeling of lips pressing to the point where your neck meets your shoulder, Presnel smiling against your skin – and you feel an old familiar sense of discomfort creep up your spine.

There’s a flash of shame that you remember from when you were a teenager.

Footballers don't want to fist their hands in the front of their teammate's jersey and pull them into a kiss. Except Presnel's eyes are twinkling in the light of the Coupe de France victory and that's all you want to do.

Suddenly you want to get out of sight. You want to run away from the prying lens of Layvin’s phone camera.

Presnel lets go of your hands and you butt your head against his chest. He laughs loudly, and you could take the moment to walk away and find Kevin or Marco or Blaise but you choose to stay and follow Presnel.

You leave behind Layvin and laugh away his disgruntled protests. You don't think about him yelling “tout est claire.”

 

 **2.  
** **Disneyland Paris,** **  
** **December 2017.**

 

You’re responding to a joke that Marco cracked when you see Presnel pull a chair out for you from the corner of your eye. It makes your heart falter in your chest. You can see that he’s filming you, phone pointing up at your face, and you feel your cheeks heat up.

Presnel loudly insists that you sit next to him. He throws in English as well and then grinning at you over the top of his phone to see your reaction. You shoot the camera a smile. You were always going to sit beside Presnel anyway.

You wonder if you could die from this feeling in your chest. You wonder about the men before you who felt the same desperation to forget and ignore and pretend.

Footballers are not supposed to want to kiss their teammates.

You’re not supposed to want another person this intensely, right? You shouldn’t even want.

It should have gone away by now, this desire to kiss Presnel, and you’re trying your best, but it’s difficult when Presnel keeps calling you babe. You have to keep reminding yourself that it means nothing more than friendship.

You breathe a sigh of relief when Presnel finally switches off his phone and slips it into the pocket of his jeans. It’s a silly thing but you worry that one day, Presnel is going to take a video or a photo of you that reveals everything you don’t want him or anyone to know. You’re afraid that Presnel’s going to record you in a moment when your eyes betray your feelings and he’s not going to want anything to do with it. You, yourself, don’t want anything to do with it.

You think about the countless photos and videos of you Presnel has on his phone, photos that never made it to the internet, no matter how many times you reloaded your Instagram home page. You wonder if any of those photos have caught your flicker of desire before you managed to stamp it out. You wonder if anyone on your team has already noticed that sometimes your gaze lingers on him for too long.

Kevin snaps his fingers across the table, drawing your attention to him and you slip into the conversation about your plans for the holidays. You’re going home to your parents. There’s a vague sense of worry because you know your parents will ask you if you’ve met anyone, a girl, and you will brush them off. You don’t tell Kevin that though. You smile and tell him about the things you’re in charge of cooking for the Christmas dinner.

Presnel’s arm is a steady weight across your back and you lean back cautiously, unsure of whether this is allowed of you. Presnel doesn’t shift or move away and you feel yourself relax as you settle into the chair.

“I’ve never been to Disneyland before, Disneyland Paris, I mean,” you say when the conversation has died down and Kevin’s focus has been commandeered by Thiago.

Presnel gapes at you and leans back in his chair.

“Babe, are you serious? It’s one of my favourite places, I came here the moment I could,” he pauses as a slow smile spreads across his face. You recognise that glint in his eyes as the kind he got whenever he had a brilliant idea he wanted to rope you into and you raise an eyebrow. Presnel grins and continues, “We should come again sometime, Drax. Just the two of us. I’ll show you all my favourite rides.”

You swallow the urge to lift an eyebrow and ask if that would be a date. It’s not but you still want to brush your lips against Presnel’s and mumble a _yes_ against his mouth.

You smile instead and look away from Presnel as the servers enter the room. “Sure, we should,"

 

 **3.  
** **Bromance by Bros. Stories,**    
**May 2018.**

 

You knock your knees against each other and drum your fingers on the bar counter. Someone asks you whether you would like another cup of tea, discreetly glancing at your teacup. You smile at them and accept the offer. You watch them walk away before you return to what you were doing before you were interrupted.

Sitting at the bar counter, you roll the word about in your mouth, tasting the way it feels to say “bromance.”

You’re in the middle of shooting a video for Bros. Stories with Presnel. You have shot with them once before, so, you know what to expect from the crew, what they expect from you, which way to direct the conversation, what points to bring up. You know the outline that they’ve given for you and Presnel to build upon and that what’s you had been doing right until the point Presnel had signalled to the camera that he needed a break. Now, you’re sitting at the bar counter waiting for Presnel to come back from the washroom and repeating the word to yourself.

Bromance. You don’t know what you’re feeling. It feels dangerous like you’re toeing the line on forbidden territory. This feels public. You think about the way Presnel had laughed when he had received the brief of the video in his email, how he had turned his phone screen towards you and wagged his eyebrows, calling you _mon amour_ with a broad smile. You had blushed and punched his shoulder and hadn’t thought about the problems the video would raise.

You didn’t think about how long you would have to sit opposite Presnel. You didn’t realise that five minutes into filming you were going to wonder if this was a mockery of the date you never had – if this was all you ever got – and a peculiar bitterness would settle at the tip of your tongue, a bitterness you would have to swallow because you were in public, you were on camera. This was the date you wanted, even if it was not real. It was what you didn’t allow yourself to dream about made real in the worst way possible.

Your wrist feels hot from where Presnel had wrapped his fingers around it. You school your face into a smile and stare down at your hands. There was no reason to get worked up in front of everybody’s eyes.

“I’m going to make you a cocktail later,” Presnel says as he steps up to the bar.

His eyes scan the bottles on the wall. Presnel is so close to you that all he needs to do is take a step towards you and turn his gaze on you, and you would be able to trap him between your thighs. Your knees tremble and you swallow the desire to kiss him which was burning on the back of your tongue.

“I don’t really drink,” you hear yourself say and Presnel snorts.

He rests his arms on the counter of the bar and tilts his head to look at you. His eyes are warm with mirth and you find yourself smiling back at him.

“Why are you lying to me, babe?” He asks, raising an eyebrow at you, and you feel the breath catch in your throat.

You’re always lying at some level, aren’t you? You open your mouth to reply, to say something, to deflect even if Presnel isn’t being serious or accusatory, but a crew member saves you when they return with a cup of tea. You smile at them, more grateful about the interruption than you can allow yourself to show.

The director asks if the two of you are ready to resume filming. Presnel squeezes your knee as he settles back on to his chair. You nod your head.  

 

 **4.  
** **Return of the Champions,** **  
** **August 2018.**

 

They hand out the t-shirts to you and you smile as you run your fingers across the writing on the front. You pull it over your head and follow Kevin to where someone is clapping their hand and directing the team to gather around them in a semi-circle. They’re yelling out instructions but you’re not paying much attention as you push your way through the bodies to get to the front of the line.

It’s not that you’ve not seen Presnel already.

He FaceTimed you last night before you were going to bed. He had talked for an hour, kept you up longer than you had intended to stay, but you hadn’t minded as much because it was Presnel. He had told you about his holiday as though he hadn’t texted you about it already, as though he hadn’t sent you photos of the things he thought you might like to see. Presnel hadn’t brought up the World Cup.

There’s a part of you that hurts still but you’ve kept it locked away. You’re happy. You’re happy for Presnel.

You were happy when he sent you a photo of him kissing the top of the World Cup statue, his gold medal tied around his head, with a caption that read – _kissing it for you, babe_. By the time the World Cup finals had come around, you had come to terms with the way everything had disintegrated, but you still ached when you saw the trophy in Presnel’s hands. You had sent him a heart emoji, switched off your phone and buried the last inklings of disappointment.

You are happy for Presnel. You couldn’t be prouder.

The door opens and Kylian, Alphonse and Presnel step out onto the training ground. Someone wolf-whistles, another person cheers, someone screams “mon gars,” and you keep clapping till your hands hurt and your cheeks ache from how wide you’re smiling. Presnel’s gaze slides to you. He blows you a kiss and winks, and you don't need a mirror to know that there are the beginnings of a blush high on your cheek.

Presnel makes his way through the gathering, laughing at the slaps on his back and the handshakes and the enthusiastic hugs. He slows down when he gets to you, face breaking into a wide grin. Your ribs expand at the surge of pride and tenderness in your chest. You'd meant to hug him quickly and thump him on the back but you forget.

You hold his head in your hands, hear his sharp intake of breath, feel the way he stills in surprise, and then you hug him.

In that moment you wish this was enough. It's not enough. You want to kiss him, you want to kiss him so desperately that sometimes, it makes you wish you weren't who you are.

Burying your face in his neck, you mumble a quiet congratulations and feel Presnel's arms move to wrap tightly around your waist. He squeezes you and whispers a _thank you_ and an _I missed you, Drax, I missed you so much._

You pull away from the hug with a breathless laugh, sliding your hand down Presnel's back. Presnel stares at you with a contemplative expression before Thiago calls him over to introduce him to Tuchel. You watch him walk away.

“Are you okay?” Kevin asks you, resting his hand between your shoulder blades.

You freeze at the knowing tone in his voice. You've not been very careful. You don't turn around to meet his gaze, afraid of what he might see unwritten on your face, but you nod and say yes.

You are okay.

Presnel is back. Presnel is home.  

 

 **5.** **  
****First Leg of PSG vs Manchester United, Champions League Round of 16,** **  
** **February 2019.**

 

Footballers do not go around kissing their teammates. Footballers cannot go around kissing their teammates. You know this. You’ve known this ever since you were a teenager.

Footballers cannot kiss footballers but some do.

For some, it unfolds in the middle of the pitch, in the luminous afterglow a goal when the emotion is at an all-time high. For some, there’s an accidental contact of lips. For others, it is deliberate, private, cherished, real.

Footballers cannot kiss footballers until they're in a situation that permits them to.

You've seen footballers kiss footballers in the spur of the moment. There's something about the rush of the adrenaline after a match, after the realisation of victory, after dreams materialise in the form of the ball meeting the back of the net that creates the desire to kiss another.

It’s a push that starts somewhere in the middle of your chest.

You feel it at Old Trafford. The Theatre of Dreams. Dream bigger.

Presnel jumps up and slots the ball past De Gea. One minute the score was tied zero-zero, you blinked, and the next minute, Presnel had scored his first ever goal. Presnel, who is the heart of Paris in many ways.

Throwing your hands up, you hear yourself shout as you rush forward to where everyone is screaming around Presnel, falling over each other in an effort to get to him, to touch him. You don’t fall on to your knees with the rest but the temptation is there. The air is alive with a sense of frenzied sacrosanctity. You brush your hands with your teammates. Thilo is yelling loudly. Angel swears at the crowd. You hear the booing fade away.

You feel it then – this need to pull Presnel away from your teammates, to grab him by the sleeve of his shirt and to kiss him till the world fades into nothingness. Till the last two men left standing are Presnel and you.

You want to capture the moment in your mouth. You want to kiss Presnel and tell him everything you've been too afraid to say.

A Champions League goal is a worthy occasion for a kiss.

The crowds part. Presnel stands up and turns towards you, a cheeky grin on his face. You jump at him and he stumbles backwards, laughing as his arms come up to wrap around your waist. He lifts you off the ground, swinging and spinning you around before putting you back down.

You don’t kiss him because he puts you back down and you have to run back to your positions. You don’t kiss him because this is the most important game of your life and there are bigger things to think about it. You don’t kiss him because he stood up and looked at you but when your gaze flickered to his lips, the threat from when you were a teenager rose its ugly head in the back of your head. You don’t kiss him because that feeling of bravado collapsed and disintegrated in your mouth. You don’t kiss him even though you want to.

The game continues and your thoughts fall away as you focus on the ball. You run and it feels as though you’re flying. You look around at your teammates with the PSG crest on their chest and you can tell that you are not the only one who can barely feel the ground beneath your feet.

Later, when you’re on the bus to the airport, you stare at the photo of Presnel and you. How do you caption a photo without saying too much? Everything you say is not good enough, not grand enough to convey the magnitude of victory that you feel. Or, they are not words anyone needs to know. You type and delete, retype and delete, type and delete, again and again, till Thilo sighs loudly next to you.

“Let me caption it for you,” he says.

Your face heats up. You wonder if he read your words despite the fact that you had angled your phone screen away from him. Thilo doesn’t say anything more and holds out his hand. Deleting the text once again, you give Thilo your phone.

He’s succinct and precise and he doesn’t address your feelings.

You click the post button.

 

 **\+ 1.**  
**Second Leg of PSG vs Manchester United, Champions League Round of 16,** **  
** **March 2019.**

 

Dreams don’t always come true. You know this.

You can hear the Manchester players cheering in their locker room. You close your eyes and count to ten.

You've been here before.

The door to the medical room slides open and you lift your head up to see Presnel standing in the doorway. He's dressed in his casual clothes already. His face is devoid of expression but you can tell that he's been crying. He looks drained. You smile at him weakly, the only form of reassurance you can offer him, and gesture at the stool beside the bed. Presnel follows your hand and steps into the room. His movements look mechanical as though he's moving on autopilot without registering what he's doing. 

"How's your hamstring?" He eventually asks.

You grimace and shrug. It's bad. It's really bad. You've been here before. "Not looking good, they're discussing my options in the next room."

"Yeah, they told me I'd find you here," Presnel says.

He falls silent then, his gaze fixed on you but there's a sadness in them that breaks your heart.

This was not how the story was supposed to go. This was not supposed to be the end.

You're not thinking when you lift your palm to stroke Presnel's cheek. Presnel blinks slowly at you as though he's waking from a stupor and leans into your touch. He tilts his head and kisses the palm of your hand without breaking eye contact with you. His breath is warm on your palm. You vaguely wonder if you're dreaming.

This was not how the story was supposed to go. This was not how you expected the story to go.

“Babe, mon amour,” Presnel murmurs against your palm and closes his eyes.

Something clicks into place in the universe.

You inhale sharply. There's nothing about Presnel's words that differ from the usual things he calls you but sitting at your bedside, there's a plaintive note of reverence in Presnel's voice that you've never heard before. Surely, you must have imagined it? Your fingers tremble against the side of Presnel's face.

It feels wrong in some ways – thinking about kissing Presnel when you're both devastated by the loss. You wonder if it's the defeat that has made you feel this way: desperate to the point that you want to tell Presnel that you love him.

Lying on the bed in the medical room, you feel braver than you've ever felt in years.

“Presnel, I want–” You start to say, pushing yourself to sit up straighter to get closer to Presnel. The words die in your throat because you do not know where to begin.

This is what you know: footballers are not supposed to kiss their teammates or their opponents but despite the obstacle in their path, some of them do.

You slide your hand behind Presnel's head, careful and tentative. Presnel's eyes are wide and teary but there's the beginning of a smile on the corner of his lips.

“Finally,” he says, and in the middle of heartbreak, it almost sounds like relief.

You tilt your head forward and kiss Presnel.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> there were a lot more things that i would have liked to deal with but didn't really have the space to fit in this fic. like the consequences of their own personal feelings and the difficulties of actually being in a relationship. but that's not the story. this was the story i wanted to tell and i hope it's okay. 
> 
> this is a work of fiction and i do not make any profits of this. i have no intention to harm, malign or offend anyone. none of this happened, none of it is real.
> 
> anyway, if you liked this work, please do leave kudos or comments! thank you for reading!


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